If city Board of Elections records are to believed, voter Luz Pabellon has defied the tides of time and is a walking miracle, living quietly in The Bronx at the astonishing age of 164.
Pabellon’s official voter registration card puts her date of birth at Jan. 1, 1850. “AGE: 164,” the record proclaims, a number that has only been achieved in biblical stories.
That preposterous age would make Pabellon a contemporary of Abraham Lincoln.
A simple phone call by The Post quickly determined that Pabellon has never in fact met Honest Abe. The Bronx resident, born in Puerto Rico, is a slender, spry 73-year-old who said she is insulted that election officials placed her in the 19th century.
For the record, Pabellon was born on Feb. 14, 1941.
“That’s not me! I don’t know why they did that!,” said Pabellon, a registered Democrat, when told she’s being listed as the oldest human ever known.
“That’s very strange. I’ve been voting for many years,” she added — just not in the 1800s.
Board of Elections officials confirmed its records do indeed list Pabellon as 164.
And they have an explanation, wacky as it may be: Pabellon registered to vote in 1978 and wrote “18 +” under the date of birth category on the manual voting card. When the board converted its voter files over to an electronic database, it board plugged in “01/01/1850” as the default date for those whose birth dates were unknown or unclear.
The practice raises the specter that hundreds or thousands of voters are listed as being 164.
Insurgent Bronx Democrats who have alleged fraud at the Board of Elections said the bizarre practice of punching in bogus ages for voters from a prior century bolsters their case.
“This is crazy. It’s insane,” said William Russell Moore, who challenged Bronx Assemblyman Marcos Crespo in the Democratic primary. “The Board of Elections is very inept. How many people are they doing this to? This is the type of inattention that allows fraud to take place.”
Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer said she will immediately urge the state comptroller to audit the board records.
“That’s so crazy. I’ve never heard anything like that before. It’s just unbelievable,” said Brewer, who used to monitor the board’s activities as former chairwoman of the City Council’s Investigation Committee.